The Tree and the Cancer Cell
Reflecting on an unexpected growth in business revenue during the pandemic of 2020, a client sagely quoted the naturalist Edward Abbey: “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” Or of a coronavirus, one might say these days.
If my client’s business were a tree, one could say that it is producing more fruit than he expected. He’d probably say the unexpected quantity is even weighing down the branches as he’s looking to hire new team members to relieve that pressure. As long as his motivation is to care for his overburdened employees or serve his clients better, he’s avoiding the “ideology of the cancer cell.” It’s growth for the sake of a higher value.
But when growth becomes the highest value of a company, all sorts of dangers lurk in justifying this good-sounding end by potentially harmful means. At what human cost does the acquisition of the fast-growing tech startup come? How do you know when to stop? Does the market (perhaps the ultimate limiting force) have a conscience?
Whether it’s a dogwood or a redwood, a tree will only grow so large. After it reaches its limit, its only growth is by multiplication, by creating seedlings. A single tree is limited by its environmental context. Perhaps that’s the most important difference between the tree and the cancer cell. The tree is limited by the other elements in its environment. The cancer cell’s ability to exist in a system with other kinds of cells is compromised by an operational defect that makes it—to anthropomorphize—an idiot, caring only about itself and its perpetuation through uncontrolled, destructive proliferation.
Unlike the tree and the cancer cell, living things with consciousness can choose the kind of growth they seek, both for themselves and for the conscious systems in which they work and live.
A Solution for Being Stuck
In a recent conversation with one of my clients, he shared that his business showed a growth in sales during the pandemic of 2020 that had defied all expectations.
Furthermore, he had just become acquainted with someone he sensed would have high potential as a member of his team, but hiring is a big decision, and he was understandably hesitating. Did his business actually need the new role he was considering? If so, was now the right time to create and fill it, or would it be wiser to wait? If now, then was the person he had in mind the right choice?
A wrong answer to any of these questions could cost him, so he chose to use our time to think through them. Hiring someone without the necessary qualities for success in his business and its culture would be costly. Hesitating to create and fill this new role might mean missing out on acquiring a talented performer who seemed to sync with company culture. Creating a role his business didn’t need did not seem efficient…
At the mention of this word efficient, I recalled an episodeª of a podcast in which one of my favorite leadership consultantsº had argued that striving for excellence in more than one of three areas, among which was “operational excellence”, was a recipe for mediocrity. When I shared this thought with my client, he realized that the personal attention he gives his clients is clearly more important to him than the efficiency of operational excellence. This insight about his priorities cleared a path for his action.
“I can’t do it all,” he said at the end of our session, reflecting on the insight he had gained. It’s enough to do the most important things well. The pursuit of perfection can paralyze us, but the power of priority can propel us to action.
ª https://www.tablegroup.com/hub/post/19-making-strategy-simple/
º Patrick Lencioni was referring to The Discipline of Market Leaders by Brian Treacy and Fred Wiersema (https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/michael-treacy/the-discipline-of-market-leaders/9780465003976/).
A Cure for Instability
The deadline for mailing gifts to arrive in time for Christmas is quickly approaching. If you’re lucky, you may receive a very personal gift during this holiday season. Even if you’re not so fortunate as to get a hand-knitted scarf from a friend who took up yarn-wrangling during the pandemic, you’ll probably receive something. You’ll probably give too.
Most of us know intuitively that something has been lost in our post-industrial, technologically advanced world. In the midst of unprecedented wealth, power, and knowledge, there is a tangible disconnectedness. Add to it political tension, a coronavirus pandemic, and the resulting economic disruption, and we live in a world of profound instability.
In the midst of this, I was lucky enough to give a gift to someone who understands gifts the way ancient people do. Nearly every time we speak by phone, she reminds me of the gift I gave her and how meaningful it is to her. And she recently gave me the “meta-gift” of understanding gifts the way she does, a book that taught me that there is a cure for this instability in which we live, for which the holiday season presents a golden opportunity: the giving and receiving of gifts.
In The Gift,º Marcel Mauss presents a stunning survey of gift-related practices in ancient societies from every corner of the globe. His observations and conclusions provide us with a few precious principles that all of us can apply to create stability in an unstable world:
- A gift is a living thing: It carries with it the spirit of the person who gave it. To give it is to give part of yourself, and to receive it is to receive a part of someone else’s essence. When we give and receive gifts in a truly personal way, we revivify our experience of life.
- Giving is a good cultural norm: “In ancient societies, people were anxious to give. There was no occasion of importance when one was not obliged to invite friends and share the produce of the chase or forest; to redistribute everything at a potlatch; or to recognize services from chiefs, vassals, or relatives by means of gifts. Failing these obligations—at least for the nobles—etiquette was violated and rank was lost.” The social pressure to give gifts is not a bad thing.
- It’s in our best self-interest to give: There is an old Hindu teaching that the secret of fortune and happiness is to give, not to keep, not to seek but to distribute it that it may return in this world and in the other. According to this teaching, self-renunciation and getting only to give is the real source of profit and the law of nature. It is in the nature of food, in particular, to be shared; to fail to give others a part is to “kill its essence”, to destroy it for oneself and for others: “He who eats without [this] knowledge kills his food, and his food kills him.”
- Giving and receiving gifts creates a sense of reciprocity and connectedness: The person who receives a gift does not merely recognize that he has received it, but realizes that he himself is in a sense “bought” until it is paid for.
Mauss concludes with a few suggestions for modern societies: “The rich should come once more, freely or by obligation, to consider themselves as the treasurers of their fellow citizens…Meanwhile, the individual must work and be made to rely more upon himself than upon others.” Ending with the famous image of King Arthur’s round table, Mauss asserts: “The mere pursuit of individual ends is harmful to the ends and peace of the whole, to the rhythm of its work and pleasures, and hence in the end to the individual.”
These ideas have implications on many levels, from the individual to the national. In a time of instability, giving and receiving gifts may be the most deeply human way to cure it and the disconnectedness that fuels it.